John Hutchinson was paying a visit to Vinnie Ream, the sculptor, who designed the General Thomas monument in April, 1874. Among the guests were three ex-Confederate generals. At her request Hutchinson sang _The Blue and the Gray_; when he had finished singing the song, the three Confederates rose simultaneously, and one after the other shook his hand with great heartiness. "Mr. Hutchinson," they said, "that song is a passport to you anywhere in the South." Alexander H. Stephens, the ex-vice-president of the Confederacy, upon hearing from these gentlemen of Mr. Hutchinson's singing, sent a special request to him to come to his hotel and sing _The Blue and the Gray_. He was wheeled into the room in his chair to listen to the song. At the conclusion he declared that the country was safe when such sentiments became popular. [Illustration: _GRANT'S MONUMENT_] Mr. Hutchinson himself composed the music for Finch's famous song. At the great Atlanta Exposition in 1895, Mr. Hutchinson made the journey to Atlanta by special invitation of the management, and was present on "Blue and Gray" Day. He says of the experience: "Who can picture my thoughts on that notable occasion? To think that, at last, the man who had known what it was to be maligned and buffeted in the South, should be received with honor in its chief city, and witness the effects of reconstruction in the great cotton country! It was a 'New South,' indeed, that I saw. And there, to the great gathering of Union and Confederate soldiers, I sang the song that had so often in later years been a key to open the Southern heart to the Hutchinsons:-- "'No more shall the war cry sever, Or the winding rivers be red; They banish our anger forever, When they laurel the graves of our dead! Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day; Love and tears for the Blue; Tears and love for the Gray.'" Perhaps no one thing has done so much to soften the bitterness which civil war left in our country as the beautiful ceremonies connected with Memorial Day. As the years have gone on, and every Memorial Day the Southern soldiers have been more and more wont to cover the graves of their dead foemen with wreaths of Southern flowers, and again and again gray-haired veterans from both the "Blue and the Gray" have met beside the Hudson to do honor to the great commander who at Appomattox said, "Let us have peace," the coldness of suspicion and distrust have blown away, until, now that the boys from the South as well as from the North have marched together again under the old flag to fight a foreign foe, we see eye to eye.